Steve Jobs Shows Off Fast-Surfing $199 iPhones
Posted by reckonerz on June 10, 2008
Apple Chief Executive Steven P. Jobs showed off his company’s new version of the iPhone in San Francisco this morning that runs on faster wireless networks and offers a host of new games and Web services. The new device, which still go on sale July 11, will cost $199 for the cheaper 8-gigabyte model and $299 for the 16-gigabyte model. (The original iPhone was launched less than a year ago at $599.)
Mr. Jobs also demonstrated a bunch of new applications for the device, including games, news and a Mobile Me platform that will synchronize the phone’s information with the user’s other computers via the wireless Internet.
Below is the live blog I wrote from the event, with the most recent material at the top. My colleague Saul Hansell in New York has written a related post on Apple’s bid to charge for services that others offer for free and another post on the important new tools Apple is giving independent iPhone software developers.
2:51 p.m. EDT|: That’s it. No classic “one more thing” from Mr. Jobs, followed by another big surprise.
A map of the countries, in red, that will carry the Apple 3G iPhone. (Credit: John G. Mabanglo/European Pressphoto Agency)
2:47 p.m. EDT| Huge Price Cut: New Phone for $199:While the tune “It’s a Small World” played over and over, Mr. Jobs displayed on a map the 70 countries that will have (official) iPhone 3G distribution. But China, India and Russia are not among them.
What’s left? The price.
The 3G will sell for $199 for 8 gigabyte model; $299 for the 16 gigabyte model. Available July 11 at the same price around the world.
2:40 p.m. EDT| Details of 3G Phone: “We need to sell iPhones in many more countries,” said Mr. Jobs. “We need to make it more affordable.” Mr. Jobs said the No. 1 reason more people don’t buy it because it costs too much.
The “iPhone 3G” is being introduced. Thinner at the edge, a plastic back, 3.5 inch-display, a camera, a flush headphone jack.
Mr. Jobs demonstrated how much faster the 3G phone is compared to the old EDGE network the first generation used: 21 seconds versus 59 seconds to load a graphics-rich Web site.
The speeds are approaching Wi-Fi, he said — “amazingly zippy.” He said it is faster than a Nokia N95 or a Treo 750.
What about battery life? Five hours for talking using the 3G nework, said Mr. Jobs. For audio playback, it lasts 24 hours.
G.P.S. is built into the new iPhone.
“We can actually do tracking,” he said. He showed how the phone’s map can track a person driving down curvy Lombard Street in San Francisco.
2:33 p.m. EDT| Faster Data Service: “This is the phone that changed phones forever,” said Mr. Jobs. He said 80 percent of users are using ten features or more on the iPhone.
Apple sold 6 million iPhones until supplies ran out, he said.
The new phone will run on 3G network, which provide much faster data service than the old iPhone’s 2G network.
2:27 p.m. EDT| Mobile Me:This is a server in the cloud that pushes e-mail, contacts and calendars right to the iPhone, like Microsoft Exchange does for enterprise desktops. Nothing that radical.
If a meeting is changed, Mobile Me’s servers update the calendar over the air. It will work for PC users using Microsoft Outlook. A new contact is added on the phone and the contact is updated on a computer also connected to the service. (The Web address is me.com and, as Saul Hansell had reported last week, is a replacement for Apple’s .mac service.)
Apple’s slogan for Mobile Me is “Exchange — for the rest of us.” The price of the service is $99 a year.
“We’ve been working on that for a while,” said Mr. Jobs. “We think we got it right.”
My colleague John Markoff is more impressed than I am by Mobile Me. He says it’s a “slam dunk” that will threaten Google’s Gmail service.
2:17 p.m. EDT| Rules for New iPhone Applications:
- Developers set the price and keep 70 percent of the revenue, Mr.Jobs said.
- Free apps will be available on the Apple applications store for free. Apple isn’t taking a commission.
- Big apps will be downloaded through a computer.
- Enterprises can distribute applications to phones on their own network securely.
2:12 p.m. EDT| New Features of the iPhone 2.0 Software:
- Contact search
- Full iWork document support
- Support of Microsoft documents beyond Word, including PowerPoint and Excel.
- A scientific calculator — turn your phone to landscape mode to make the calculator switch.
- More languages, including the ability to draw kanji (Chinese characters used to write modern Japanese) on the screen.
The software will be released in early July, free for all iPhone owners and $10 for iTouch users.
2:01 p.m. EDT| The Flow of Applications Seems Endless:
Images from Major League Baseball on an iPhone. (Credit: Kimberly White/Reuters)
A demonstration of the the MIMvista application for viewing medical imagery. (Credit: Kimberly White/Reuters)
- Cow Music — a tool to turn your iPhone into a musical instrument, such as drums, a piano or a guitar. No price was given.
- MLB.com — The official Web site of Major League Baseball developed software to show video highlights of games minutes after the play.
- Modality — The software company created an application that displays medical textbook applications for students. It plans to have other flash-card-type educational applications.
- MIMvista — It created a medical application for doctors to display and manipulate diagnostic images while they are on the golf course.
- Digital Legends Entertainment — Another game, this one an action-adventure title. Count on games being a big category for the Apple iPhone applications store.
1:46 p.m. EDT| Still More Applications:
- TypePad — A blogging application, free from the Apple apps store.
- Associated Press — The international news service created a news feed to provide local news based on the user’s location. It wants people to send news stories and photos from the phone. The AP Mobile News Network will be free.
- Pangea Software — It has developed two games, one of which is a 3-D game featuring cavemen driving race cars. The iPhone is the steering wheel for the game. Also $10.
1:42 p.m. EDT| Another Application:
Loopt — A location-based service linked to a social network, Loopt locates friends on a map. (The service is available for other phones, but Loopt says this version is better than any of the others.) It will be a free service.
By the way, I was wrong on Monkey Ball’s price. It’s $9.99. I corrected it below.
1:34 p.m. EDT| Apple Shows Off New Game and eBay Interface: The tools have been available to developers for about three months.The company is showing off some of the developers’ results:
- Super Monkey Ball from Sega — A game with 110 stages and all four monkeys. (The game is like Nintendo’s Mario series.) It makes use of the iPhones accelerometer so the iPhone becomes a game console.
Not cheap, though.(My colleague John Markoff corrects me.) The game is cheap. Sega is selling it for$100$9.99. - eBay — An application for participating in auctions from the phone with a new interface. (The interface is a lot easier to use than the eBay Website accessible from a computer.
1:24 p.m. EDT| Location-Based Services: The iPhone in business will have an address book of all company employees and allow access to documents on a corporate server.
Apple is letting developers working on the iPhone 2.0, which is what Apple is calling the new version during this presentation, create location-based services for the phone. For instance, a developer can build a program that can locate all the contacts in the phone’s address book within five miles of where the phone user is.
1:15 p.m. EDT| The iPhone Moves Into the Enterprise: Apple is giving a sneak preview of the new operating system later this afternoon to developers.
Mr. Jobs starts with emphasizing the iPhone for the enterprise. He doesn’t mention the BlackBerry, but this is the market that Research in Motion dominates. Apple wants in. Mr. Jobs says 35 percent of Fortune 500 companies have tested the iPhone. So have many major universities.
1:10 p.m. EDT| I’m here at Moscone Center in San Francisco. Apple Chief Executive Steven P. Jobs just came on stage to talk about Apple’s latest products and developer tools at the company’s Worldwide Developer Conference.
I’ll update this blog post frequently as we hear what Mr. Jobs has to say.
